Sickle Cell Anemia

California Health Director Kenneth Kizer said that next week the state will offer expanded screening of babies for sickle-cell anemia as part of an effort to lower the black infant mortality rate. Kizer announced the plan Thursday during a tour of Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center in Watts, one of four hospitals statewide that will share a grant of $1.3 million to expand prenatal services to black women. The infant mortality rate statewide is 8.

Sickle cell anemia causes pain, fatigue and delayed growth, all because of a lack of enough healthy red blood cells. And yet genetic mutations that cause it — recessive genes for the oxygen-carrying hemoglobin protein — have survived natural selection because they also seem to provide a natural defense against malaria. Scientists have long known this, and they have long wondered how it worked. In a paper published this month in the journal Science, researchers describe their look into how mutated hemoglobin genes defend their cells against attacks by the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum . Study lead author Marek Cyrklaff, an electron microscopist and molecular biologist at Heidelberg University in Germany, explained the results.

A new treatment for sickle-cell anemia--a drug that reduces the anemia and helps prevent the painful "crises" that mark the disease--has shown promise in a small, preliminary study of three patients with the disease.

An initiative launched by the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. to screen close to 167,000 college athletes for "sickle cell trait" is "full of potential pitfalls" and should be recast before taking effect, two experts from the National Human Genome Research Institute and a leading pediatrician have warned. The NCAA program -- the first large-scale effort to use genetic information to reduce injuries -- is likely to be a...

A new ultrasound device enables doctors to prevent crippling strokes in children with sickle-cell anemia by identifying the children at greatest risk, a researcher said Wednesday. Up to 7% of children with sickle-cell anemia suffer strokes that can cause paralysis, said Dr. Robert Adams of the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. Until now, doctors have had no way to identify the children at risk until the children had a stroke, Adams said at the annual American Heart Assn.

A music festival featuring free bone marrow screenings will begin a monthlong campaign against sickle cell anemia today at the Lynwood Civic Center. Organized by more than two dozen groups, the concert marks the start of Sickle Cell Anemia Month and National Bone Marrow Month, in which residents are invited to register as potential marrow donors. Dr.

A benefit concert to raise awareness of alternative treatments for the blood disorder sickle cell anemia will be held Sunday afternoon at the Elegant Manor in the West Adams district. Sickle cell anemia affects more then 50,000 African Americans. "The whole purpose of the event is to bring attention to drugless therapy to heal and stop the fatalities caused by sickle cell," said Somayah Peaches Moore Kambui of the Crescent Alliance Self-Help for Sickle Cell organization.

Sickle cell anemia causes a cascade of painful and disabling complications that lead to frequent hospital stays and a shortened life expectancy. Yet there are few treatment options for the genetic blood disorder, which afflicts millions of people worldwide, including about 80,000 Americans who are mostly of African descent. However, a novel therapy may ease symptoms and diminish the chronic damage to vital organs that leads to early death.

A multinational team of researchers has found that bone marrow transplants are an effective cure for sickle cell anemia but only for a small group of people who can get the right marrow match from a sibling. A study of 22 carefully selected children with a severe form of the disease found that 16 were apparently cured by the transplant.

Individuals suffering from acute attacks of sickle cell anemia can receive the drug hydroxyurea from their physician as treatment for the debilitating blood disorder. Federal health officials recently found that hydroxyurea was effective in reducing the frequency of painful sickle cell anemia attacks. Daily doses of the drug also helped lower the need for hospitalization, according to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which released the test results Jan. 30.

Researchers have for the first time performed a successful bone marrow transplant to cure sickle cell disease in adults, a feat that could expand the procedure to more of the 70,000 Americans with the disease -- and possibly some other diseases as well. About 200 children have been cured of sickle cell with transplants, but the procedure was considered too harsh for adults with severe sickle cell disease. Now a team from the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins University is reporting today in the New England Journal of Medicine that it has developed a much-less-toxic transplant procedure and used it to cure nine of the first 10 patients studied.

Anne Hosterman sensed something was wrong with her infant daughter soon after she brought 8-pound, 3-ounce Leah home from the hospital. "She never cried. She was so lethargic," Hosterman recalled of her fourth child. "I kept taking her back to the doctors, but they just thought she was a happy, contented baby." It wasn't until Leah was 8 months old that specialists identified the cause of her mother's concern: mild cerebral palsy from a massive stroke. The prognosis wasn't good.

Taking the next step in a series of breakthrough stem cell experiments, scientists have cured sickle cell anemia in mice by rewinding their skin cells to an embryonic state and manipulating them to create healthy, genetically matched replacement tissue.

Dr. Jeanne A. Smith, 75, a hematologist and expert on sickle cell anemia who helped expand federal guidelines for testing infants, died Nov. 11 of a stoke in Lewisboro, N.Y., the New York Times reported. Through the 1970s, '80s and '90s, Smith led several studies on the disease financed by the National Institutes of Health. According to the Times, she helped lead a federal panel that in 1993 called for broadened screening for the disease.

In the quiet of a laboratory on the campus of England's Cambridge University, biochemist Vernon M. Ingram made a discovery in 1957 that would prove to be a groundbreaking moment in the history of molecular medicine and sickle cell research. Building on the work of Nobel Prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling, Ingram compared the hemoglobin of a normal red blood cell to the hemoglobin of a sickle cell.

Some patients with severe sickle cell disease may need a lifetime of blood transfusions to reduce the chances of suffering a stroke. Scientists had hoped that patients with the blood disease could be treated with a limited number of transfusions. But a new study of 100 children, published in the Dec. 29 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, found that the stroke risk reappeared after blood exchanges were stopped.

In the quiet of a laboratory on the campus of England's Cambridge University, biochemist Vernon M. Ingram made a discovery in 1957 that would prove to be a groundbreaking moment in the history of molecular medicine and sickle cell research. Building on the work of Nobel Prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling, Ingram compared the hemoglobin of a normal red blood cell to the hemoglobin of a sickle cell.

Under live oaks and towering sycamores on a ranch tucked away in the Santa Ana Mountains, 105 kids sing campfire songs, cook hot dogs and talk of life expectancy. The kids, at the oldest camp for sickle cell anemia patients in the country, have heard the odds--many die of the disease in childhood. But on Wednesday, KNBC-TV weatherman Christopher Nance, 41, who has the illness, told the campers to make their own odds, the way he did.

Sickle cell anemia causes a cascade of painful and disabling complications that lead to frequent hospital stays and a shortened life expectancy. Yet there are few treatment options for the genetic blood disorder, which afflicts millions of people worldwide, including about 80,000 Americans who are mostly of African descent. However, a novel therapy may ease symptoms and diminish the chronic damage to vital organs that leads to early death.

For years, Somayah Kambui argued that she had a medical right to use marijuana--a drug of choice for many like her who suffer from the debilitating and painful disease sickle cell anemia. So the 51-year-old founder of a cannabis club, Crescent Alliance Self Help for Sickle Cell, said she got a doctor's prescription and began growing her personal stash of marijuana in her South Los Angeles backyard.